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Outdoor Playsets

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Swing Set Layout & Maintenance
playset
Swing sets are a great way to spend time with your kids in the backyard.  These play sets can run from a couple hundred dollars to thousands of dollars.  The Rainbow set is really the Cadillac of swing sets and they are great play sets.  However, if you cannot afford the Rainbow set there are a lot of other great sets that can provide hours of fun.

Installing a Window Well French Drain

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French drains are common drainage systems, used to prevent ground and rain water from damaging a structures foundation and or interior dwelling.  French drains are made up of corrugated PVC Tile and or gravel.  The french drain allows rain water and or ground water to be diverted around a structure and into a central collection area.
french drain
From the last article I wrote on weeping tiles, I added a french drain to the project during the clean out of the old clay tiles.  The french drain was added to a Window well that had filled up with rain water under extreme heavy downpours.  In 2008 during a summer thunderstorm rain water hap pooled around the back side of the house.  This caused the window well to take on water.  The water had no where to go and so it passed the sliding glass basement window and into the basement.  Due to the spot close to a floor drain the homeowner did not have much damage.  However, it was enough of an issue that they decided to fix it for good.

 

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Clean, Fix or Install Weeping Tiles For A Dry Basement

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Most homes with basements usually have drain tiles called weeping tiles.  These tiles help keep the basement dry.  The tiles run around the outside of the basement footer just below the level of Concrete floor.  The tiles carry ground water away from the walls and into either the sewer line (old way) or into a Sump pump (new way).  The old way was done with clay Tile and dumped into the sewer line before storm drains were installed by municipalities.
weeping tileIf you have an older home without a sump pump you may have the ground water dumping into the sewer line.  A good way to tell is that someplace in the basement you will have a clean out close to where the sewer line exists the home.  This clean-out is sometimes called a sand trap and it's shaped like a "U" to catch dirt before it enters the sewer line.  If you can locate the clean-out it is a good idea to clean it out  and check to see if water is still flowing through the system.  To clean out the sand trap you can use a wet dry vac.

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Tankless Water Heater Review

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tankless

Before beginning this article only contains information on tankless water heaters that run on gas either natural gas or propane.  The tankless units that run on electricity are not economical as most cannot produce the efficiencies and output as gas.

During a trip to Europe in 1998 I found out about these little suit case like devices called tankless water heaters. Up to that time I had only been accustom to the tank water heaters.  While I was there I found out how they worked however, here in the States they were not very popular in 1998.  It took sometime for these units to become popular and to find an installer to install them. 

Fast forward ten years to 2007 when I purchased my first tankless water heater. Our old tank was eleven years old and I figured I had better start seriously looking into finding another tank or a tankless to replace it. The motivating factor was that the government was not going to extend the tax breaks on the tankless in 2008 so I purchased the tankless at the end of 2007.  The model I purchased was the Rinnai R53i which supports multiple location use and has many features which eliminate some of the known issues that come along with other tankless water heater.


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Detecting Home Heating Loss

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A good detection of home heating loss can be detected quite simple if you live in the north with a significant amount of snow fall.  Winter snow fall is the best time to see how well your home is losing or retaining heat. What translates into heat loss in the winter will translate into cooling loss in the summer.

Here are some tips to tell how your home is losing heat and how to fix the problem the correct way.

Icicle and Ice Dams

icicles and ice dams As kids we all enjoyed finding icicles as the shape and sparkle was intriguing. However, this is the first indication of heat loss from a home. Icicles or ice dams will appear on the bottom edge of the roof. Which indicate some type of heat loss from the home.
Icicles and ice dams can cause damage to the roof, shingles, roof decking, and interior walls and ceilings. As the ice forms it pushes itself up and under shingles and Roofing materials. The expansion of ice as it freezes forces the shingles and roofing materials apart. As melting occurs above the ice formations the water will run down the roof and up under the shingle where the ice has separated the roof material. The water can then freeze again overnight causing the roofing material to expand. This processes can occur over and over again until the the water reaches up the roof and just over the interior walls.

To answer the question of why the snow is melting off the roof and forming ice we will need to look inside the attic or conditioned space below the roof. The home can lose its' heat through the attic or space below the roof. The underside heat melts the snow turning it into water. With little insulation in the ceiling of this space the heat can escape from the home and start the melting process.
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